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Why Ogres have green skin.

The first Ogre was a giant called Charlie. He was over seven foot high. His feet were bigger than a large saucepan. Charlie’s hands were huge like dinner plates.

Charlie lived in the middle of a huge town. When he tip toed around town, birds fell off their perches. Jellies lost their wobble and collapsed onto plates. Children ran and hid.

Charlie felt sad. He loved talking to people, telling jokes and having fun.

The trouble with being left on your own is fun is hard to find.

One afternoon he said, “I am leaving. There is no reason for me to stay. I live on my own. I talk to nobody. Visitors never come to my house. It is time to move on.”

This he did. Charlie packed up his clothes along with food in a tablecloth. He knotted the ends of the cloth together, slung it across his shoulders. In a box he put everything he thought he would need. Hammer, saw, plates, a saucepan and kettle. Charlie walked a long distance.

When he reached the base of the Lumpy Sugar Mountains. He sat on a fallen tree and looked around him.

It was pretty. Birds came and sat beside him. Charlie enjoyed listening to their twittering and singing. He took out a chunk of bread. The birds fed on it and flew towards the large wood in the distance. A rabbit came to sit by him.

Charlie looked at the mountain. It looked big, cold and lonely. He looked at the wood. He saw birds, rabbits and squirrels darting in and out of the trees. He decided birds and rabbits might be good company. He set off to find a place in the wood.

Charlie loved living in the wood. He found a river to fish in and a spring with clear sweet water to drink. He discovered berries and apple trees on the outskirts of the wood. In the fields surrounding the wood farmers planted crops of potatoes, carrots, cabbage and broccoli. Charlie was never hungry. If he took some of the crops from the field he always repaid the farmers by mending gates and walls. Though the farmers were puzzled by this magical mending.

In time others came to live in the wood. Charlie fell in love with a daughter of an Ogre family he knew.

The change in the Ogre’s appearance happened slowly. The Ogres lived in the deepest darkest part of the forest.

They rarely saw the sun because it was filtered through the trees high above them.

Their skin began to take on a slightly green tinge.

They didn’t care, they were happy. Charlie always believed having green skin was a very small price to pay for happiness.